You know, I am seriously over the “experts” and the utter nonsense circling the Barbie doll and it is beyond me why it’s still getting column space. I was furious enough, when the ridiculous accusations directed at the Barbie doll first surfaced, to have written a couple of columns myself because I could not understand how someone could get credence for blaming a doll for girls developing issues with their body type.
We are talking about a doll here. One we all had a lot of fun playing with when we were kids and then our kids followed suit, but for the last decade or so there has been a little group of agitators trying to convince us that little girls who play with Barbie are on the road to anorexia, bulimia and a lifetime of body image issues which will see them clocking up hours on the analyst’s couch for years to come. Now, if that is the case, the last few generations prior to Barbie being outed as the Body Image Satan or whatever, should be severely depressed and seriously underweight as they desperately try to whittle themselves down to a two inch waist and a naked weight of just a few grams. As that is not humanly possible then they should all be dead! But they’re not because they saw Barbie as just a favourite doll and not something to try and emulate! Children are not stupid.
Oddly though, I’m not hearing anything along these lines in regard to buff action figures and little boys. I’m guessing this is because it would not get the same reaction from the politically correct crowd who love to tie themselves in knots over girl issues, hence minimal to zilch media coverage.
But getting back to Barbie. As the doll continues to sell like hotcakes, “research” teams continue to run studies aimed at “exposing” the Barbie doll as a bad news toy for little girls and the most recent, published in something called Body Image Journal is making the unbelievable claim that just one play session with a Barbie doll was sufficient to influence girls as young as five to develop a “must be thin” mentality. The study is based on interviews with 160 girls aged from five to eight at various primary schools around Australia and naturally the team leader (female) claimed to have found that playing with Barbie, or even just looking at images of her even once was sufficient to make girls strive for a thin body. But how leading were those questions? Another “expert” on body image, a Professor of Psychology at an Australian university (also female) appears to support the findings and believes girls should not be given Barbie dolls to play with when young but in the case where they already have them, their parents should encourage them to do more than just make Barbie look pretty. I have no idea what the Professor means by that. What exactly would she have them do…?
Mattel however, the company that makes Barbie, has wisely chosen to strongly disagree with the research’s “findings” , claiming the researchers failed to accurately represent the Barbie brand and the realistic play experience with the doll and like it or not, I’m with them. Barbie is just that, a doll. A child’s plaything, and in all my years I have yet to see or hear of any little girl growing up damaged psychologically because she had played with Barbie. But to hear the “expert” tell it, exposure to Barbie promotes “internalisation of the thin ideal, leading them to see appearance as being important and being skinny is good!” Girls naturally see appearance as being important, even very young girls. It’s in their make-up, but to blame that on a doll is absolute drivel.
Let me tell you where that mindset really comes from. The schoolyard goddesses. These (usually blonde) girls appear to have been absurdly blessed by Mother Nature and are the epitome of beauty from the top of their glossy tressed heads to the soles of their fashionable school shoes and many a little girl has compared herself unfavourably to the class stunner and believed herself to have come up short. It becomes even more pronounced when they reach high school, which is a breeding ground for issues about looks, none of which has ever had anything to do with a Barbie doll. It’s about hours spent in front of a mirror wishing they looked as good as Whatshername and slamming the bedroom door on parents who, lacking empathy, fail to cough up the funds for the spray tan and the go-blonde visit to the hairdresser.
So leave Barbie out of it.